Debi Nova has toured with Ricky Martin, collaborated with the Black Eyed Peas and has been nominated for six Grammys.
Yet while she is a star in her native Costa Rica, in the United States and elsewhere, Nova is virtually unknown.
The singer-songwriter hopes to change that with her album debut, “Luna Nueva” (which means New Moon), out May 18 on Decca Records. And she is getting some big help with her project: Gustavo Santaolalla, the legendary Argentine musician who was introduced to English audiences with his Academy Award-winning score for 2005′s “Brokeback Mountain,” is the album’s producer.
“There have to be certain traits in an artist that will make me excited to work with them. In the case of Debi, there are a lot of things that attracted me,” he said in a statement. “She’s a great musician to start with. She writes great songs. She’s a great performer. Debi has that talent that she can write in part Spanish and English and, as part of the concept of this album, both Spanish and English in the same song. All those things add up to make Debi a very exciting artist.”
“Luna Nueva” has 10 songs and includes the single “Drummer Boy,” a contagious tune whose sensual video has been on rotation on various MTV channels and other outlets since last month.
“It’s an album that doesn’t have borders in terms of language, it’s very free-spirited,” Nova said in a recent interview in New York.
“There are songs that have a Spanish chorus, a verse in English and three words in Spanish. (It’s) how we communicate, you know, one sentence in English y otra en espanol,” the 24-year-old explained in a mix of Spanish and English. “That’s how the album is.”
Nova, who began playing piano when she was 4 years old, was supposed to release her first album with Warner Brothers, but after three years with the label only one single came out, the hit “One Rhythm,” in 2004.
When she moved to Decca, she wrote or co-wrote completely new songs, inspired by the life that she lives between San Jose in Costa Rica and her adopted city of Los Angles, where she has lived for seven years. The album draws on the sounds of Latin America and the world that she listened to as a child.
“It has a Latin flavor, whether it’s the lyrics or the music,” she said. “And since I’m from Costa Rica … (my country) is a sponge, we’re in the middle of the continent and we take from each side.”
Nova, who recorded the songs “Que mas da” and “Drop It On Me” with Ricky Martin and appeared in those videos with the Puerto Rican superstar, said that one of the sweetest compliments she received recently is that the singer now refers to her as family.
But the most important gift, Nova said, has been being able to work with the two producers she wanted from the start: Santaolalla, winner of multiple Grammys and two Oscars, and the United Kingdom’s Marius de Vries, known for his work with Madonna, Bjork, Massive Attack and Josh Groban.
De Vries said of Nova: “There’s an intelligence and a musicality in everything she does. I think we’ll be seeing her around as a force to be reckoned with for many years to come.”
Drivers caught under the influence of alcohol have a new ally, the criminal court judges that defy the work of the Policía de Tránsito in taking drunk drivers off the roads.
It may not be the policy of all the judges, but one in particular, judge Carlos Chávez, has come out publicly to defend his decision to let free a drunk driver who test with a 1.63 blood alcohol content.
The judge says that the roadside breathalyzer tests cannot be relied on, as they are not accurate enough and/or lack proper calibration and have a margin or error up to 25% or more from results of blood tests.
Judge Chávez cites problems in Europe using the breathalyzer sensor.
A Telenoticias report on Monday’s noon news report proved that the breathalyzers are reliable. The report took a breathalyzer sample of a test subject who had knocked down five shots of whiskey 20 minutes before having a Tránsito official take a reading with an official breathalyzer.
The result indicated a 1.32 reading.
Twenty minutes later, the same test subject had is blood tested at the Clinica Biblica in downtown San José which resulted in a reading of 1.36.
The Policía de Tránsito assure that the 200 breathalyzer units used by the police force are reliable and are calibrated and checked at least once every three months.
When it comes to jailing drunk drivers, as provided in the new Ley de Tránsito, whose drunk driving provisions went into effect on December 23, 2008, the numbers speak for themselves.
Of the some 3.500 drivers caught by traffic police for being over the legal limit, only 17 – yes, 17, have been sentenced to jail by the Tribunales de Flagrancia.
In addition, none of the 17 have had to spend time in jail.
According to judge David Hernández, the majority of drivers accept alternatives to jail to complete their sentence of up to three years.
Many of the sentenced drivers have chosen to do community work and pay a fine, to which the judges have openly accepted.
The director of the Policía de Tránsito, German Marín, was diplomatic in his position, saying that like in all ther situations where there is a jail term in play, it is understandable that there is a conciliation process allowed.
The ancient stone spheres of Costa Rica were made world-famous by the opening sequence of “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” when a mock-up of one of the mysterious relics nearly crushed Indiana Jones.
So perhaps John Hoopes is the closest thing at the University of Kansas to the movie action hero.
Hoopes, associate professor of anthropology and director of the Global Indigenous Nations Studies Program, recently returned from a trip to Costa Rica where he and colleagues evaluated the stone balls for UNESCO, the United Nations cultural organization that might grant the spheres World Heritage Status.
His report will help determine if sites linked to the massive orbs will be designated for preservation and promotion because of their “outstanding value to humanity.”
Hoopes, who researches ancient cultures of Central and South America, is one of the world’s foremost experts on the Costa Rican spheres. He explained that although the stone spheres are very old, international interest in them is still growing.
“The earliest reports of the stones come from the late 19th century, but they weren’t really reported scientifically until the 1930s &’ so they’re a relatively recent discovery,” Hoopes said. “They remained unknown until the United Fruit Company began clearing land for banana plantations in southern Costa Rica.”
According to Hoopes, around 300 balls are known to exist, with the largest weighing 16 tons and measuring eight feet in diameter. Many of these are clustered in Costa Rica’s Diquis Delta region. Some remain pristine in the original places of discovery, but many others have been relocated or damaged due to erosion, fires and vandalism.
The KU researcher said that scientists believe the stones were first created around 600 A.D., with most dating to after 1,000 A.D. but before the Spanish conquest.
“We date the spheres by pottery styles and radiocarbon dates associated with archeological deposits found with the stone spheres,” Hoopes said. “One of the problems with this methodology is that it tells you the latest use of the sphere but it doesn’t tell you when it was made. These objects can be used for centuries and are still sitting where they are after a thousand years. So it’s very difficult to say exactly when they were made.”
Speculation and pseudoscience have plagued general understanding of the stone spheres. For instance, publications have claimed that the balls are associated with the “lost” continent of Atlantis. Others have asserted that the balls are navigational aids or relics related to Stonehenge or the massive heads on Easter Island.
“Myths are really based on a lot of very rampant speculation about imaginary ancient civilizations or visits from extraterrestrials,” Hoopes said.
In reality, archaeological excavations in the 1940s found the stone balls to be linked with pottery and materials typical of pre-Columbian cultures of southern Costa Rica.
“We really don’t know why they were made,” Hoopes said. “The people who made them didn’t leave any written records. We’re left to archeological data to try to reconstruct the context. The culture of the people who made them became extinct shortly after the Spanish conquest. So, there are no myths or legends or other stories that are told by the indigenous people of Costa Rica about why they made these spheres.”
Hoopes has a created a popular Web page to knock down some of the misconceptions about the spheres. He said the stones’ creation, while vague, certainly had nothing to do with lost cities or space ships.
“We think the main technique that was used was pecking and grinding and hammering with stones,” said Hoopes. “There are some spheres that have been found that still have the marks of the blows on them from hammer stones. We think that that’s how they were formed, by hammering on big rocks and sculpting them into a spherical shape.”
Exports for Intel Costa Rica recovered from the decline they had been experiencing since April 2008 for the second consecutive quarter.
Increased demand for chips and chipsets for computers and cellular phones generated sales of $595 million for the company between July and September of this year, 18% more ($91 million) than for the same period in 2008.
In the three months leading up to that time, the multinational based in Heredia also improved its exports.
From April to June, sales surged by 8% ($32 million) in relation to the same quarter last year, reaching revenues of $ 449 million.
Karla White, manager of Intel’s Corporate Relations in Costa Rica, said that markets where Intel sells, Asia, America and Europe, have recovered faster than expected from the financial crisis and this has benefited the company.
White conceded that the multinational’s increase in exports is also due, to a lesser extent, to the transfer of part of the production that the company had been doing in three plants that it closed in Asia earlier this year.
The manager added that the rise in sales in the second and third quarters have helped the company to predict a positive close for this last quarter.
Intel will finish 2009 with exports of $1.9 billion, up 3% over 2008 ($1.85 billion).
However, White would not venture to affirm that the world financial crisis has been overcome in its totality.
“We have no magic ball. We are looking at the market with optimism and we have positive outlook for 2010, but we are not making projections yet,” she said.
The lowest point in the transnational’s sales occurred between November 2008 and January 2009. During those months, exports fell $262 million (44%) compared to $594 million during same period in 2008.
Intel’s business placements represent 20% of total Costa Rican exports. The improvement since the second quarter has caused sales of the country’s sales to decrease at a slower rate since then.
White pointed out that investment and production technology has been vital to lifting the company’s sales. “People want a performance increase. There is a very positive performance by mobile products (laptops and cell phones) where the Atom processor has played an important role,” White added.
These devices operate with chips and chipsets that Intel is making here. The chips and microprocessors are the brains of electronic devices, while the chipsets are equivalent to a computer’s nervous system and they are responsible for controlling the flow of within.
The manager said that new server technology also increased sales the above-mentioned equipment from Costa Rica.
“With these servers, companies that have or provide services to other data center (data storage centers) achieve greater efficiency and, therefore, they upgrade equipment,” she said.
Servers are Intel’s main product manufactured in Costa Rica, and they enable companies to store and distribute vital information on their computer network.
Intel many not be sure about the world economic crisis, but news is good so far. If sales and exports continue to increase, it will also help Costa Rica overcome the world financial crisis.
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Debi Nova has toured with Ricky Martin, collaborated with the Black Eyed Peas and has been nominated for six Grammys.
